NORTH CANTON − The former Spitzer car dealership building downtown is now rubble, and contractors are set to expand the North Main Street and Charlotte Street intersection during the next year.

On Tuesday, Ray Bertolini Trucking of Akron tore down the 100-year-old car showroom structure at 407 N. Main St. The 2,501-square-foot building was in the way of a widening of Charlotte Street that's intended to improve access for school buses to a new preschool and kindergarten through second grade school.

Patrick DeOrio, the city's director of administration, said about four to six workers using a backhoe and front-end loader demolished the building within the course of a day on Tuesday.

The administrator said he expects the contractor to clear the rubble soon. Workers will spend the next few days sorting through what's left of the building for materials that can be salvaged as scrap, including concrete and metal. The day after the demolition, metal beams that once held up the roof could be seen piled on the right side of the rubble.

DeOrio said the city had to demolish the entire building to create space for the intersection expansion.

“The actual road will be through the middle of the building," he said. "You can’t just leave half a demolished building."

Bertolini will then fill in the hole with a material, compact it and grade it, DeOrio said.

He said Bertolini was paid $49,975.

Eslich Wrecking of Nimishillen Township had offered to do the job for $52,000, and Underground Services $54,750.

Under the contract, DeOrio said Bertolini agreed to obtain the necessary permits from environmental regulators and ensure the legal disposal or recycling of the rubble. Bertolini gets to keep the proceeds from any sale of disposed material.

DeOrio said the project did not have to go out to bid because it was under $50,000. And the city had hired Bertolini before to demolish the Kmart store on North Main Street.

The administrator said that a city contractor found no signs of asbestos in the building before it was demolished. And workers applied water to the rubble with a hose to seek to minimize the amount of dust in the air.

More:North Canton to use eminent domain while pursuing closed Main Street auto dealership

The $2.7 million project to widen the intersection of Charlotte and North Main also includes building a roundabout where Charlotte meets Portage Street to the west. State and federal grants are expected to cover $1.7 million of the cost. The cost does not include $229,600 for engineering, a traffic study, survey and design, according to figures provided by DeOrio.

The city administrator said the project to widen the intersection has not yet gone out to bid. But once the city awards the work to a contractor, the work on the intersection should be completed by fall 2023.

That's when the North Canton City School District is set to open its new grade school on Charlotte. In the meantime as part of a $10 million expansion of its presence in North Canton, Diebold Nixdorf is expected to relocate much of its offices and operations, including 400 jobs, to the Hoover District, starting by the end of this year. Dozens of additional delivery trucks a day are expected to use the intersection as a result.

The project will add a westbound lane to Charlotte that will go west from North Main to Fair Oaks Avenue NW. Charlotte east of North Main will have four lanes, an increase from the current three.

Workers will construct a right turn lane on southbound North Main Street between Charlotte and Viking Street NW so an expected 27 school buses a day can line up in the turn lane before turning right to go west on Charlotte to drop off and pick up children from the school to be constructed.

The city expects about 450 private vehicles will pick up and drop off children per day. A turn lane will also be added to Charlotte west of North Main for vehicles going east on Charlotte and turning left to go north on North Main.

East of Main on the Hoover District property, workers will add a westbound lane and a turn lane so vehicles going west can turn left to go south on Main. Charlotte east of Main will have two westbound lanes, an eastbound lane and the turn lane.

Julius Brown LLC, which DeOrio says is a family trust, owns the property at 407 N. Main St., which decades ago had a Spitzer dealership as a longstanding tenant. DeOrio said the property had occasional tenants since Spitzer moved but had been vacant in recent years.

The city could not come to an agreement with the Brown family on purchasing 9,921 square feet of land on the eastern and southern sides of the site for the intersection widening and temporary access for construction vehicles and equipment.

The negotiations delayed the project. On June 27, the city filed in Stark County Common Pleas Court to buy the land under the eminent domain process. The case has been assigned to Stark County Common Pleas Judge Chryssa Hartnett.

If an agreement can't be reached through mediation, a jury will decide the amount by which Julius Brown LLC is compensated for the loss of part of property for the new lane and the loss of the building. DeOrio said the building had to be demolished to make room for the new lanes. The city has deposited with the court $216,000, the amount it believes is the fair market value of the land it appropriated and the temporary construction easement. The city offered to pay $275,000.

The city's appraiser determined that the value of the property owned by Julius Brown LLC would decline from $1.51 million to $1.35 million with the city's appropriation of some of the land.

Reach Robert at robert.wang@cantonrep.com. Twitter: @rwangREP.